


Shepard Moon

by sanidine



Series: decaying orbits [2]
Category: WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Kayfabe Compliant, M/M, Space Facts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 20:39:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7329889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanidine/pseuds/sanidine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damien had yet to adjust to Stardust's erratic comings and goings even though they had been rooming together for a while now. Damien always had to stop himself from thinking of it as rooming together again - he had roomed with Cody before, not with Stardust.</p><p>“There are whispers.” Stardust said, swaying back and forth a little. He had locked eyes with Damien in the mirror. “Soft and sibilant mumblings in the corridors.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shepard Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts).



> Shout out to mithen, who is an enabler of the highest order
> 
>  
> 
> Someone on the kink meme requested a sequel to [ Satellite ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7266964), so here ya go!

It was two in the morning on a warm summer night, and the air was heavy with humidity and annoying flying insects that kept swooping down around Damien’s head. Here he was trying to speak resonably to this police officer but they both looked like fools, flapping their hands around to try and swat the bugs away. Unacceptable, but it wasn't like there was anything Damien could do about it except try to ignore the buzzing that brushed by his ears. At least Damien was more successful at remaining stoic than the cop, who was young and tired and - Damien sincerely hoped - willing to let this small incident slide in order to avoid the paperwork.

Damien had pulled into the hotel parking lot at the same time that Stardust was being hustled, kicking and yelling, into the back of a cop car. Of course Damien had intervened. He’d seen nothing of Stardust since what Damien referred to internally as their ‘chance encounter’ backstage a month before, but that didn’t mean he wanted to have to hear Seth Rollins complaining about how Triple H had been complaining about being called in the middle of the night to post bail.

Still, his willingness to step forward didn't mean that Damien was particularly well equipped to explain why Stardust had been laying on his back in the grass at the edge of the parking lot, singing off key about comets and refusing to leave. Lucky for him, the police seemed to have a their own preconceived explanation for that type of behavior.

“Your, uh. Your friend.” The cop fidgeted with his notepad as Damien stared him down. “Has he been taking his medication?”

“No.” Damien replied. Didn’t elaborate, even when the cop heaved a tired sigh.

“Is he a danger to himself or others?”

Damien and the cop glanced over in unison. Stardust was sitting in the back of the police cruiser talking to the other officer through the open window. His hands were still secured in behind his back in the plastic flexicuffs, but he seemed excited again instead of furious as he had been when Damien had arrived on scene. He was gesturing up towards the night sky using his head, and from the bits of the conversation that Damien could catch Stardust was telling her about emission lines and galaxy classification and the glorious immortality of matter.

“Of boring them to death, maybe.” Damien had to suppress a grimace - that had sounded terrible, flat and insincere. He never thought that Stardust was boring and his acting skills were obviously no longer up to par. But Damien understood that if the police thought Stardust was dangerous then the encounter would not end well. He needed to diffuse the situation before Stardust started talking about black holes sucking the marrow out of everyone’s bones.

It had been the right thing to say, given the way that the cop laughed and flipped the notebook shut, rubbed a hand over his weary face.

“There’s a residential treatment center in the next county over. I’m sure they’re full, but I could give you the number if you want it. Try to get him on the waiting list.”

“That won’t be necessary, thank you.” Damien put his hands in the pockets of his jacket as they walked back over to the cruiser to hide the way that they curled into frustrated, impotent fists. “We’re just passing through.”

Damien would learn after a few very confusing days that the precipitating factor for the entire chain of events had been John Cena getting injured. Nothing too terrible, just enough to keep him off the road for a week while he rested up. Damien hadn’t given it much thought at the time - it wasn’t like the two of them were ever on the same cards anymore. The variable that he couldn’t have accounted for, because almost no one had known, was that Cena had been putting two rooms under his name in each city.

“The company picks up the tab. Hunter takes it outta his paycheck, I think.” Cena explained, standing in line behind Damien at catering the day he’d returned. Damien thought Cena seemed almost embarrassed, as if Damien himself weren't acquainted with the multitude of problems that came from dealing with someone who claimed to be a cosmic entity and, as such, had no official forms of identification.

“I just handle the check-in and give him the key card. Half the time he doesn't even use the room.”

“Hmm.” Damien looked carefully back at Cena as he offered “I would be willing to assume that responsibility from you, should you wish.”

“Really?” Cena sounded a little too relieved, but Damien wouldn’t hold it against him. “That'd be great. Thanks man.”

“You're welcome.”

John Cena was, beneath his numerous faults, a decent enough human being. Damien would have to buy him a ‘Exercising for Dummies’ book so that Cena could maybe learn the skills necessary not to get injured in the future.

Over time Damien had come to terms with himself, with the reputation that he'd cultivated. There was no self pity in his heart anymore, just cool acceptance - nothing that had happened to Damien was undeserved. He had betrayed Cody in what had ended up as a failed bid for the championship, ruining the best thing that he'd ever had. Then Damien had eliminated Miz on the biggest stage of them all only to have that achievement slip through his fingers as well. Damien only regretted one of those decisions anymore, but that really just made it worse.

If Stardust had remembered him… If Stardust had still been Cody, then he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with Damien. But as things were he didn't seem to have any issues with Damien’s proposal to room together. In fact, Stardust’s exact response had been to nod, thoughtful, as he replied “Makes sense. Most of the brightest stars in the galaxy are binary.”

Making sure that Stardust had a room to go to each night seemed more like management's attempt to keep him contained and out of trouble than any actual effort to make sure he was well rested. Damien had never actually seen him lay down on a bed, much less sleep. Even on the occasions when Damien woke up in the dead of night Stardust was awake. Staring out at the night sky, staring down at his hands, staring at Damien with those uncanny eyes shining bright in the darkness.

That wasn't to say that Stardust didn't sleep at all. Ziggler told Damien that he had, on multiple occasions, come across Stardust zonked out behind the equipment crates during events. One time Big E had found him drooling on a bench at an interstate rest area with no mode of transportation in sight - how Stardust had gotten there was never determined, but the New Day had given him a ride to the next city.

Ziggler and Big E had both mentioned these occurrences as a way to let Damien know that they were glad he was willing to help out an old friend who was going through some rough times. Damien had smiled tightly as he corrected them on the fact that he and Stardust were not, in fact, old friends.

Damien hadn’t brought it up with Stardust - if the other man wasn't comfortable sleeping in Damien’s presence after what had transpired between them… Damien understood. He wasnt going to press the issue. He wanted to reassure Stardust, but every time he tried the words died and turned to ashes in his mouth.

\---

“Tell your fucking weirdo boyfriend to leave me alone.”

Damien lowered his book, set his jaw as he looked over the spine at the very irate and very sparkly Randy Orton.

“He's not my boyfriend.”

That was a fact. Damien might have taken over the responsibility of making sure that Stardust had a place to crash each night, but nothing else had happened between them since -

(Most of the roster didn't like to talk about whatever it was that had happened the month before. Damien himself felt the cold clench of shame in his throat whenever he thought about it. Stardust never would have wanted that from Damien if not for some inexplicable aphrodisiac effect. Orton on the other hand, never one to be delicate, had no qualms about bringing it up.

Rumor had it that, rather than getting swept up in an unwise encounter, the Viper had just RKO'd himself through every folding table he could find until he’d knocked himself unconscious.) 

“Fine, whatever fancy ass word you wanna use for it. I don't give a shit.” Orton gave Damien a murderous glare, and Damien did his best to keep his face neutral. “If he throws glitter in my face again I'm going to kick his ass.

“Do what you must then, Randall.” Damien shrugged and went back to his book. “Stardust is responsible for the consequences of his own actions.”

Much to Damien’s annoyance, Orton didn't leave immediately. He stayed standing in the doorway of the locker room for a while as he wiped his hand over his face again and again, raining down fine showers of glitter. Orton must have just come back from a match when Stardust got the drop on him, judging by the way that it had all but cemented into all the damp patches of sweat across Orton’s head and shoulders

Stardust had a well known proclivity for sneaking around and lying in wait for Orton to walk past. Then he would jump out and peg Orton directly in the face with fistfuls of glitter before running away, cackling. Damien noticed this time that there were some bigger chunks of confetti stuck on Orton as well - it must have felt like getting sandblasted right in the face.

Damien wondered, not for the first time, how much of Cody’s memory Stardust had retained. There must have been some trace bits from Cody’s old Legacy days rolling around in Stardust’s head, probably in the same fugitive synapses that drove Stardust's inclination to hammer Damien with astrophysics knowledge at every opportunity.

“Do you think -” Orton said, apropos of nothing before he cut himself off.

Damien sighed and lowered his book again. “Do I think what?”

“I can never catch him. Do you think he teleports?” Orton blurted it out finally, and if Damien wouldn't have known better he would have thought Orton sounded embarrassed. “Kane can teleport. And the Wyatts.”

“What's your point?”

“I can't teleport.” Orton said, looking dejected as he scrubbed more of the confetti out of his short hair.

Later that night, Damien was trimming his beard in the hotel bathroom when the door swung open behind him. The hinges were silent enough that Damien might not have even noticed it opening if he wouldn't have been facing the mirror with the door directly behind him. His heart rate ticked up but he managed to keep his hand steady, avoiding a flinch that would have shaved off an inopportune patch of hair.

Stardust was standing there with his duffle bag slung crossbody over his shoulder, glaring at him.

Damien had yet to adjust to Stardust's erratic comings and goings even though they had been rooming together for a while now. Damien always had to stop himself from thinking of it as rooming together _again_ \- he had roomed with Cody before, not with Stardust.

“There are whispers.” Stardust said, swaying back and forth a little. He had locked eyes with Damien in the mirror. “Soft and sibilant mumblings in the corridors.”

Damien clicked off the razor. With the electric buzzing silenced it was very quiet in the room, the only noise their shallow breathing. “And?”

“They say that you're lost in the Lyman-alpha forest and you don't think that you need me to show you the way.”

“Ridiculous.” Damien scoffed as he turned around to face Stardust. "I'm not lost."

Damien wondered if this behavior was somehow related to his earlier conversation with Orton. If Stardust was pissed that Damien hadn’t defended him with Orton then he was just going to have to deal with it. They weren't tag partners, never had been, and Damien knew that he was already too soft over Stardust. He couldn't explain it, not even in the safety of his own head. At least not in any way that made logical sense. Regardless, Damien was too smart to get wrapped up in a feud with Randy Orton just because Stardust couldn't behave himself. If Stardust had a problem with that then, well...good. Damien was going to have to set some boundaries whether he liked it or not.

Instead of becoming irate, Stardust just shifted, grinned at Damien and wandered away to toss his bag on the spare bed. It bounced a little bit, springs creaking under the weight of his ring gear and god only knew what else. 

Damien hadn't seen the other man out of his ring gear before they started rooming together, a natural side effect of the fact that all of their encounters had been backstage affairs. Damien learned that, contrary to popular belief, Stardust did not keep his face painted at all times and he did in fact have a few normal articles of clothing. Well perhaps 'normal' was being too generous - 'normal-adjacent' was perhaps more accurate. At least Stardust didn't wear a bodysuit everywhere he went, although Damien could not begin to fathom where, exactly, Stardust had managed to find galaxy print sweatshirts designed to fit grown men.

By the time Damien made his way out of the bathroom  Stardust had dragged one of the chairs over to the window. The curtains were pulled open so that he could lean precariously in the chair so that only two of the feet were on the floor as Stardust tilted back to look up and out through the glass to see the night sky.

Damien had turned down the sheets on his bed, and was in the process of shrugging out of his robe when Stardust spoke up.

"I'm not lost either."

Damien froze. "Excuse me?"

Stardust darted a quick glance Damien’s way before he went back to staring out the window.

"In the forest. The Lyman-alpha forest. In the vast informational array of intergalactic signals. You're not lost in it, and neither am I."

Damien didn't know what to say to that, any more than he knew what to do with his creeping suspicion that Stardust had, in fact, been upset about a much different part of Damien’s conversation with Orton than Damien had originally suspected. But Stardust didn't say anything else, didn't even look towards Damien again as he slid under the covers and turned off the lamp. 

Hours later Damien woke up from a deep sleep, gradually becoming conscious of the fact that there was someone next to him in bed. The cranky hotel AC unit was churning away under the dark window, but the weight that shifted next to him radiated heat in the otherwise chilly room. Damien opened his eyes.

“The sun burns six million tons of hydrogen each second.” Stardust said, looking at him intently.

“Yes.” Damien replied, and his voice was coarse, thick with sleep and want.

As the intellectual savior of the masses, there were few that could even attempt to vie for Damien Sandow’s attention. What that ended up meaning, in practice, was that Damien was very lonely.

Stardust’s face paint from the day had long since worn away, but Damien could still see some flakes of silver in his eyebrows and along the edge of his hairline, a few smudges on his neck before it disappeared into the collar of his shirt. The other man’s eyes were alien, red and yellow, but it was still so hard for Damien to remember that Stardust wasn’t Cody anymore. Damien reached out without really thinking about it to touch Stardust’s familiar face, curled his fingers around the curve of his skull while his thumb traced the soft patch of skin right in front of Stardust’s ear.

They just kissed for a long time, pressed up against each other as close as they could get with Stardust on top of the scratchy hotel comforter while Damien was trapped underneath it. Stardust put his hand on Damien’s arm, holding loosely to the tense muscle of his shoulder as their noses nudged together. He traced his fingers down across Damien’s chest, and since Stardust’s gloves were off Damien could feel the singing points of friction when Stardust traced over the sensitive skin of his ribs, tweaked his nipple with calloused fingers.

Damien gasped, choked a little on the sudden rush of air. Stardust pulled back, grinning, wild, using the hand pressed Damien’s chest to hold him back when Damien tried to chase the kiss.

“How much do I burn?”

“What?”

“How much hydrogen do I burn each second?”

Damien rarely found himself speechless, but he genuinely had no idea what he was supposed to say to that. Even lust-addled, his brain knew the question didn’t make any sense. But his lack of response seemed to be all of the answer that Stardust was looking for.

Stardust’s grin took on a more predatory quality as he pushed Damien over onto his back, yanked the covers down and rolled to straddle Damien’s left leg right above the knee. One of his hands was still braced on Damien’s chest, pinning him down against the bed as he said

“Touch yourself.”

Damien could feel the blush heat up his shoulders, creeping up the side of his neck as he looked away and struggled not to shiver under that intense gaze. He didn’t have much room to move, held in place under Stardust’s weight, so he just pushed his boxers down, hooking the elastic underneath his balls. He was already so hard just from making out, and the tip of his cock was shiny with precome when it bobbed free and smeared against his stomach. Damien squirmed a little, embarrassed by how eager he was for it. Stardust didn't seem perturbed, just leaned forward put more weight on where he was pinning Damien’s shoulder to the mattress.

Damien took a deep breath, tried to catch Stardust’s eye to see how he was doing. If he was doing it right. Being good.

The last person that Damien had slept with before Stardust had been Miz, who’d always been demanding and had never hesitated to let Damien know what he was doing wrong in bed, how dissapointing he was. Damien hadn’t understood it at the time - an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement, which could be said for that entire period in his life - but after a while he realized that it had fucked him up more than a little bit. It’d taken Damien a long time after his final defeat at the hands of The Miz to stop thinking of himself as being lesser than. Never quite good enough.

He didn't want Stardust to berate him, but the other man’s silence was disconcerting considering that Stardust basically never shut up. Uncertainty started to claw at Damien’s chest until he saw the hot, dark look that Stardust was giving him. The other man’s eyes were almost all pupil as he licked his lips and watched Damien fidget under his gaze. Damien felt flayed open, exposed, as he took a deep breath and reached down to wrap a hand around his aching cock. His hips flinched involuntarily at that first contact, and he shivered all over when he first swiped his thumb across the tip to spread that leaking wetness around and ease the way.

“Is this. Acceptable?” Damien felt the tips of his ears get hot.

Idiotic question. As if there was a wrong was to touch oneself. He hadn’t meant to ask. He hadn’t wanted to reveal the weak part of himself that needed reassurance so badly, afraid that it would be taken advantage of.

Stardust rolled his hips to grind down against Damien’s thigh and smiled at him, bright enough to split the sun. “Can the shock wave from a supernova start the formation of new stars in other interstellar clouds?”

Damien thought, but didn’t need to say - _yes_.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are loved so much! As always I write and edit everything on my phone, so please let me know if I've made any terrible mistakes. 
> 
> Come yell at me about wrasslin' on my [tumblr ](http://www.bingitoff.Tumblr.com)


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